Yet, the picture is much worse outside of Denver, where the state’s largest water provider says it has a good handle on the issue and spends $11 million a year to replace aging pipes.

Consider the smaller systems with fewer than 5,000 people that aren’t able to spread the cost of improvements to a huge customer base like Denver Water or can’t afford the debt service on low- or no-interest loans.

These communities may be facing declining population or have a part-time water manager.

Then consider these small systems face increasingly stringent state and federal mandates for clean water, calling for even tighter controls or fixes that require significant technology upgrades.

The country’s infrastructure backlog continues to mount. The American Society of Civil Engineers has estimated the cost at $3.6 trillion.

In 2013, the Water Quality Control Division of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment identified 975 drinking water and wastewater projects around the state with a price tag of $11.2 billion, a massive increase from 2008, when there were 644 projects at a cost of $2.6 billion.

Part of the problem is that communities must keep up with unfunded mandates, such as more stringent clean water regulations required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or Colorado.

Credit state lawmakers who in 2009 passed Senate Bill 165 to direct $10 million of the state’s severance tax revenue to a grant program for small communities for water projects.

But that’s really a drop in the bucket. And although we hope that funding stream continues, it’s also time for the federal government to stop piling mandates on communities that have enough trouble just replacing aging pipes and have little hope of meeting additional requirements even with massive tax hikes.

Many were not surprised by the prompt verdict Monday in the sexual-assault case in Denver involving Taylor Swift. A jury of six women and two men concluded within hours that a Denver radio host had groped Swift _ grabbed her butt beneath her skirt during a photo shoot, as his wife stood on the other side of Swift.

Touch not that statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville. Let it stand, but around it place plaques telling the curious that the man was a traitor to his country who went to war so white people could continue to own black people.